1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure is related to a computer status diagnosis chip and a computer status diagnosis system, more particularly to a computer status diagnosis chip and a computer status diagnosis system capable of transmitting message by audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to check whether components of a computer are normal functioning, a series of detection and diagnosis processes are performed while the computer is booted up, so as to provide a user a detection and diagnosis result, which is usually called as a system diagnostic message. According to the system diagnosis messages, the user can know whether the computer has error during boot-up, and the position and content about the occurred error. At the same time, the operation environment information of the computer can also be provided to the user for further trouble shooting. For example, the environment information includes current temperatures and working voltages of the components, and a fan speed.
In conventional technology, the system diagnosis message is usually shown to the user by direct display. For example, in a personal computer, Basic input/output System (BIOS) is most generally used to provide the system diagnosis message. While the computer is booted up, through the central processor (CPU) the BIOS accesses a series of instructions stored in firmware and executes power-on self-test (POST) process. A result of the POST is displayed on an output interface of the computer, for example, the result can be displayed on a computer monitor or shown by LED light of the computer. In addition, some BIOSs of different manufacturers can also notice the user about the computer diagnosis result by combination of different lengths of sound output by a buzzer during boot-up.
In addition, an extra detection or diagnosis chip disposed on a computer motherboard can also be used to provide system diagnosis message to the user, but the diagnosis result is directly displayed on the motherboard, so the user must open the housing of the computer to see the diagnosis result displayed by the chip. In addition, a plug-in computer status diagnosis product is commercially available in market to provide user to obtain the diagnosis result without opening the housing. The plug-in computer status diagnosis product is connected to an insertion slot (such as a USB port) exposed out of the housing, to electrically connect with the computer chip set, so as to diagnose the computer status and display the diagnosis result outside of the housing.
There is still much room to improve the conventional computer status diagnosis method. For example, under a condition that the monitor of the computer is used to display the diagnosis result, it fails to provide the diagnosis result to the user if failure of the monitor or display card of the computer occurs, or the computer system has error before the monitor is activated. Under a condition that the LED light or the buzzer is used to notice the user about the diagnosis result, only simple diagnosis result can be expressed completely. In addition, diagnosis product manufacturers usually develop different specifications for diagnosis, so the user usually needs to review the specification of the diagnosis product for understanding the status expressed by the light or sound when the LED light or the buzzer is used to express the diagnosis result. For example, for the same computer status, the combinations of various lengths of sound developed by the AMI BIOS, the Phoenix BIOS, and the IBM BIOS are different. The existing way of expressing the diagnosis result is not intuitional for the user.
On the other hand, while the BIOS or the plug-in computer status diagnosis product is used for diagnosis, it may fail to detect the computer status in an early stage because the at least one component of the computer involved in the diagnosis process is activated after the early stage. Refer to FIG. 1 which shows a block diagram of a conventional computer status diagnosis system by using BIOS. After a computer is booted up, the central processor 10 accesses data of BIOS 40 through a south-bridge chip 30 and stores the data in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) 20, and then decompresses the data to execute instruction sets stored therein. In the instruction sets to be executed by the central processor 10, the first is POST instruction set for testing the computer statuses. However, when the any one of the components (such as the south-bridge chip 30, the central processor 10 and the DRAM 20) in above-described operation path has error, it fails to execute the predetermined test function in the BIOS 40. The user can only guess the probable problem of the computer but no more detail about the problem because of no response from the broken computer. Similarly, an external computer status diagnosis product is connected with the computer host through USB port, and the USB driving procedure is executed after the operating system of the computer host is activated, so the external computer status diagnosis product fails to report the detection result if the computer host has error occurred prior to running of the OS.